The Videogame Solipsist: Shining Force I and II

I'm not really sure where I first heard of Shining Force. It's one of those games that, somehow, comes into your life and you feel like it's always been there. I want to say that I rented it from the local video store because I thought the screenshots on the back of the box looked like Zelda, but I don't particularly think they do now. I guess I had a vivid, deluded imagination as a kid.

Shining Force I was the first strategy RPG I ever played, though I didn't know what RPGs were and my only strategy in the game was to kill everything regardless of any pointless peril I was putting my characters in. It speaks volumes for the easiness of this game that I never bothered to level grind as a kid because I didn't understand the concept. I just knew that a lot of my people died in every battle, and once mages ran out of MP they were worthless as anything other than bait.
People talk a lot about how 2D games have more lasting aesthetics and appeal, and it's games like Shining Force that I think of when this comes up. Though 16 years old, the game still looks cool even if the sprites aren't up to the later standards of, say, Chrono Trigger or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. For its time, though, Shining Force had incredibly large and detailed in-battle cutscenes. The characters animated well, and besides, the game had that awesome, fun dialog/choice/menu system, with cool animated icons instead of simple "yes/no/item/attack/etc." options. Though Blizzard is rightfully praised for their brilliant interfaces and--frankly--awesome looking icons/menus, Shining Force was an early game that even as a kid and not a critic I could appreciate on that level.If there's a problem with the game--and this is something that's endemic to the second game as well--it's that, the further you got into the game, the harder it was to train up new recruits. Since characters join your party at pre-determined levels, and even if you aren't actively leveling instead of just playing, they'll always be behind your other characters. Some characters overcome this by being so outrageously badass you force yourself to use them (see Hanzou the Ninja, above) while others--like Bleu the Dragon--require hours of effort to baby them up to your level. I'm told that he and the other 'useless' characters, like Arthur the magic using Knight, become incredibly strong if given enough time, but honestly the game is easy enough that it's not worth it.

At some point, Shining Force II came out. This was back in a time when you weren't always following release dates or waiting for sequels, so one day I saw it at the video store and excitedly rented it for a weekend. It was everything I'd wanted out of a sequel--bigger, more characters, slightly better looking, and a more free roaming style than the original game. I even woke up early before going to church just so I could squeeze some more time in with it because I knew it had to go back on Monday.

For any number of reasons, I never bought Shining Force II or received it as a gift. I suppose it's mainly because my friend Dave and I rented it so often, praying that other people who had it in the meantime didn't erase our save, that we felt as though we already did own it. To my knowledge I never beat either Shining Force until I was older, though I do remember playing someone else's save for a bit and seeing the very late stages of the game, marveling at how insanely strong and godlike the player's party becomes later on.
The most significant addition to the game--and the one that I wish more games would borrow--was in how you could use items to promote your characters to new, different classes. In the original game, all your characters had a set promoted class they could become. Knights became Paladins, Warriors became Gladiators, Mages become Wizards, etc. But in Shining Force II, you could use certain items to allow different promoted classes: Knights could become Pegasus Knights, Warriors could become Barons, Mages could become Sorcerors, Priests could become Master Monks, and Archers could become Brass Gunners. With the exception of the latter, these 'secret' classes were flat out better than their 'standard' counterparts. With the addition of the absurdly strong Peter (see below), they made the game even easier than the original had been. To be fair, Shining Force II offered a difficulty selection, though from what I've read all it affects is the intelligence and ruthlessness of the enemy AI.
Shining Force II's only flaw is that it's broken. As in, easy to the point of laughable. Enemy AI aside, the characters you get in this game are ridiculously strong even without the 'hidden' promotions. Peter joins your party no matter what, and he often can turn the tide of even the game's most precarious battles all by himself. Moreover, the main character of the game (you name him, so I'm referring to him in the generic) is a monster. The main character of the original was no slouch, particularly when you got to the end game's powerful, unique swords, but in the sequel he even gets a lightning spell that puts his MP to some use other than casting Egress to escape battles. On top of all of this, you get Mithril throughout the game. I never knew this as a kid, because I never found the hidden village, but later in the game there's somewhere you can go to 'spend' the Mithril to get amazing new weapons. This seems to be determined randomly from a pool of set weapons based on the character asking for it, but by abusing save states or diligently saving/resetting over and over, you could outfit most of your party with the game's best weapons.

Though I actually have played Shining Force III, at the great expense of my friend Dave, it never really caught on with us. There's something about the original two games that feels timeless and fantastic. I think I can see why they've never made a true strategy RPG Shining Force title since the third, mainly because if you add anything more to the formula it makes things needlessly complicated. Shining Force I and II may be simplistic and easy compared to any of today's strategy RPGs, but I love them for it.